This Is Spinal Tap director Rob Reiner has revealed how one iconic heavy metal band was incensed at the classic comedy movie, although Reiner quickly brushed their criticism aside. Speaking to Screen Rant to promote This is Spinal Tap‘s 41st anniversary re-release, Reiner explained that the movie draws from plenty of real-life stories about famous bands.

“We took from real life. We took actual stories that we knew about. We knew about Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers getting lost backstage and Van Halen having these crazy demands for what was backstage.” – Rob Reiner

Reiner is credited as a co-writer on This is Spinal Tap with Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest and Michael McKean, the trio who make up the heavy metal band on screen. As well as borrowing stories from the annals of rock-and-roll history, the writers also put in plenty of their own ideas. Surprisingly, it was one of these fictional stories that angered a group of rock legends.

Black Sabbath Were “Furious” After Watching This Is Spinal Tap

Black Sabbath Thought That Reiner Had Stolen Their Idea

One of the funniest scenes in This is Spinal Tap is the Stonehenge scene. The band envision a huge towering replica of the British landmark on stage, but a farcical miscommunication means that they are stuck with something 18 inches high, rather than 18 feet high. After This is Spinal Tap hit theaters, Black Sabbath took issue with this story.

“Black Sabbath was doing a tour [without Ozzy], and they came out about two or three weeks before our film came out, [and they had Stonehenge.] They saw our film and they were furious that we had stolen the Stonehenge theme from them.” – Rob Reiner

Reiner is quick to point out that this was an original idea that the writers had been working on for years before making the movie, and there’s no way that they could have copied Black Sabbath’s staging just a couple of weeks after the band first rolled out their Stonehenge replica on tour.

“To me, it was the best thing, because what morons. What did they think? They [thought] that we sH๏τ the film, we edited it, [and] we got it into the theaters in two weeks? I mean, it is ludicrous. But to me, that was the great, perfect heavy metal moment: that they were so dumb that they thought that we stole it from them.” – Rob Reiner

After borrowing and tweaking so many stories from real-life heavy metal bands, it’s poetic that This is Spinal Tap came full circle, eventually contributing to what Reiner calls a “great, perfect heavy metal moment“. The band may be fictional, but they’ve still added to the tapestry of rock-and-roll history in their own way.

Our Take On Reiner’s Comments

This Is Spinal Tap’s Satire Is Spot-On

It’s often a badge of honor for a satirical movie or TV show to be able to predict the future, since it shows that they’re perfectly aligned with the culture that they’re poking fun at. Although This is Spinal Tap came out a couple of weeks after Black Sabbath’s tour, it’s still impressive that they could anticipate a metal band using the image of Stonehenge.

Stonehenge is loaded with meaning, partly because of the mysteries of its origins, and partly because it evokes an image of ancient England that borders on fantasy, teeming with mystical druids and opaque rituals. This makes it an easy shortcut for a heavy metal band trying to create an atmosphere of timeless cosmic wonder.

The Spinal Tap writers treat the vaunted iconography of Stonehenge in the modern age as a joke, and they shrink it down on stage to show how hollow and superficial it is to project phony reverence onto an ancient culture that people don’t know much about. This is particularly prevalent in Britain, as folk artists of all kinds have often referred to the country’s deep past as otherworldly.

This is Spinal Tap was a sharp, timely satire back in 1984, but the big question is whether Spinal Tap: The End Continues will feel as relevant in 2025, when heavy metal has long faded out of fashion. With Reiner and the band returning, probably alongside another string of anonymous, accident-prone drummers, there are enough reasons to be optimistic.